The middle falls
Posted September 02, 2012 in Press Releases
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While declines have been much worse at the bottom, the typical Ohio worker has been on a downward wage trajectory since about 2006 when adjusting for inflation. The real median wage in Ohio in 2011 was just $15.20, much lower than the peak years of 2006, 2000 and 1979, but also lower than in much of the 1990s and early 2000s. In just the last calendar year, Ohio’s median worker saw a 45 cent drop in inflation-adjusted dollars from the 2010 median wage of $15.65 (in 2011 dollars). This bouncing around, with frequent wage declines, is in stark contrast to the period between the end of World War II and the late 1970s, when median wages had a steady upward trend.
Ohio once had median wages consistently higher than those of the United States